The Red Pill and Morality

Last week I was a party to a conversation on Twitter, regarding the morality of The Red Pill, and whether or not engaging in the methods prescribed by the Red Pill was immoral. The author of the linked reddit post describes the behaviors as emotional abuse and manipulative.

“She does my laundry and dishes, we have sex whenever I want, and she knows that I don’t belong to her, and if she ever slips up or takes me for granted, she’s gone.”

It’s not that I doubt what he’s saying. I believe it. The problem is, what he’s describing is emotional abuse. What the Red Pill advocates is taking advantage of common weak points in the typical female psyche (most of which are present in your typical male psyche as well; everyone has weak points, and most of them are common to all humans, though some are more pronounced in one sex or another) to put pressure on women and bend them to your will. [1]

In this case, the male has a frame in his relationship, which requires a few things from the female in question. Namely, give him priority in her life, do not act possessive, do not throw drama his way, and do things for him. However, is this really so different from the stereotypical blue pill relationship, wherein a woman will demand that her man puts her first, will limit when and who he can hang out with and demand that he invests his resources according to her preferences? Much of my irritation with “Anti-Red Pill” people, is that if a woman posted a similar story. “He mows my lawn, repairs stuff around my house, always puts me first and buys me stuff all the time”, nobody would have a problem with it, the only reason a problem emerges here is that men are fundamentally unable to apply universality and logical consistency to each sex.

The author goes on to equivocate the story told by “Mr. Red Pill” with the stories from “Blue Pill” posters about how their girlfriends and wives have engaged in emotional abuse of them, and how “turning the tables” is immoral because no human deserves to be emotionally abused.

He goes on to state:

“What the Red Pill strategy does is flip that power dynamic on its head. When it works, now it’s the man who is in power and the woman who is suffering. The man gets the sex without having to commit any real effort to the relationship, aside from making sure that his SO’s emotions are brutally crushed on a regular basis. You haven’t fixed anything, you’ve only made sure it’s your SO who’s suffering and not you.”

“There is one thing that Red Pill has right. Sexual strategy sucks. But the solution isn’t getting better at it than your SO is. The solution is agreeing with one another that you’re not going to play the game. If a game is going to always suck for one player, and both players care about one another, they’re going to find a better game to play.”

I’m reminded of “The Beach Boys“, wouldn’t it be nice if one could merely agree not to play games and attempt to fulfill the sexual strategy of the gender and just communicate. Could a Scorpion decide not to sting the frog who is ferrying him across the river? [2] It is the belief that human beings thanks to our cerebral cortex can override hundreds of thousands of years of biological programming and evolutionary selection. In essence the prescription of communication as an alternative to stratagems, manipulation, clear boundaries, clear consequences for breaking said boundaries and expectations in order to engage in a more equitable relationship is like the concept of morality in and of itself.

The unstated premise of the prescription is that people are capable of engaging in such a relationship over time without conflict. I find that the questions that appear are of a fundamental nature when it comes to sexual strategy. Much of red pill teachings, depending on how far back you go are descriptive and prescriptive. They describe the situation at hand and offers ways to behave, build yourself and so on, in order to maximize your individual outcomes towards your goal. The further back you go, the more prescriptive they get, until you arrive back in the early days of what was then “The Seduction Community“, where the focus was on what worked, rather than why and how it worked.

Is Sexual Strategy Zero Sum?

The question is whether sexual strategy is a zero-sum game or a non-zero sum game. If sexual strategy is in fact a zero-sum game, then it follows that any interaction can have only two outcomes, one party wins, and one party loses. If sexual strategy is a non-zero sum game, it follows that each interaction can end in three ways, win, lose or draw. The benefit of the third option, is that this allows an outcome to balance the win and loss between two parties engaging in the game. However, we must remember that sexual strategy is played over a period of time, that may differ from a single interaction to the rest of a person’s life. Thus, one must ask which game is the most important, the short game or the long game in a relationship?

From a red pill perspective, monogamous long term relationships are the ultimate goal of the female imperative. Furthermore, the cardinal rule of sexual strategy [5] states that:

“For one gender’s sexual strategy to succeed the other gender must compromise or abandon their own.” Rollo Tomassi

Therefore, it follows that on some level one will have to make a cardinal compromise. If males are to make this compromise, it means lesser happiness for the male, if the female makes this compromise it means lesser happiness for the female. From this it follows that the cardinal compromise, itself is a case of zero-sum.

However, in the smaller picture and increasing detail level of day to day life, one could argue that LTR of a monogamous nature are in fact non-zero games, wherein the male and female can negotiate between themselves openly about who wins, who loses and when a draw is suitable. However, one must keep in mind that whether such completely equitable relationships are possible is still a question of a hung jury. There can only be one president within a relationship, as a relationship between an Alpha and a Dominant cannot work [6]. While both parties may change over time, negotiating sexual strategy, is merely one step away from negotiating desire.

Once two parties negotiate that they will each abandon their sexual strategy, this strikes me as attempting to negotiate away hundreds of thousands of years of psycho-biological development.

The Morality of the Red Pill

The two major schools of morality that I’ve covered elsewhere on this blog are duty ethics (deontological ethics) and consequence ethics (consequentialist), a third school that is not much debated is Virtue ethics, which I will not cover in this post. From a deontological perspective, our intent decides the morality of our actions, if you intended to shoot the hostage taker, missed and shot the hostage, it was a morally right act as you did not intend to kill the hostage. From a Consequentialist perspective, your intent does not matter, only the consequences of your action, thus as you shot the hostage it was a morally wrong act.

Deontological ethics and the Red Pill

As defined above, duty ethics would seek to prescribe the morality of actions based on their intent based on a set of rules. A personal favorite of mine is Kant’s categorical imperative:

First formulation: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.”

Second formulation: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”

What would be the effect if all men were red pill, and acted in accordance with red pill teachings? Would the world be better or would the world be worse. It would shift the world from running according to the feminine imperative and at first approach a more balanced decision making matrix among men and women in long term relationships. However, it would most likely lead to females feeling their influence significantly reduced as compared to at present.

Secondly, would the females in relationships with all these men be treated as means to an end or as ends in themselves? This is the difficult question. It is my contention that all relationships entered into at present are ends in themselves, rather than means to ends. The female in a situation where the male is utilizing Red Pill teachings, would be treated as ends as the goal of the man is to influence her behavior in such a manner that the relationship between the two can last.

Consequentialist Ethics and the Red Pill

As moral behavior is judged according to its consequences in this moral philosophy, one would have to wonder what the consequences of adopting a red pill mindset entails for both parties in a relationship. As both parties would be judging their actions in accordance with their consequences on each other and the relationship, it follows that the relationship should be all puppydogs or roses, or does it? Such an outcome would be based on the premise of no conflicting situations, wherein one party would have an incentive to work for better consequences for them at the expense of their partner.

For instance, it is fairly well documented that Red Pill teachings advocate a degree of fear/anxiety provoking behavior on the part of the man, in order to keep the woman in line. Examples of such behavior could be getting fit or making sure to say no even if that means she’ll hold out on sex [4]. This has the effect of communicating that the man is both attractive to other women, and that her vagina does not override his self-assurance. In effect, he refuses to supplicate for sex. This has the consequence of making her feel unsure, in the case of the former. In the case of the second, it balances out the decision matrix between the two in that she can no longer force his compliance with sex.

Which, begs the question, is it immoral for the male to utilize red pill awareness to prevent his wife from using sex as a compliance reinforcement tool like B.F. Skinner used electric shocks and feedings on rats?

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism, coined by Jeremy Bentham, is a set of normative ethics that views moral behavior as that which maximizes utility. Utility may be defined in many ways but most frequently takes the position of maximizing the well-being of sentient creatures. Bentham originally defined it as aggregate pleasure left after deducting suffering of all involved in any action. Applied to a human relationship, this would mean that a utilitarian approach, could take 2 positions:

A) Maximum happiness to one party at the expense of the other

B) Equal division of happiness and miseries.

From a self-serving perspective assuming an aggregate maximum happiness of both parties being 100. Extreme positions would be 100 – 0 towards one party. However, it is likely that there is a minimum threshold for happiness that must be maintained in order to avoid the relationship falling apart. Thus it follows that no party regardless of whether analyzed in terms of deontological or consequentialist ethics, must ensure that the other party remains over the minimum threshold to avoid an end to the relationship.

It follows that in order to maintain a status above the minimum for both parties, a degree of equitable distribution of both happiness and miseries are required. This does not mean that one would engage in a form of “tit for tat” gameplaying, but barring situations where a potential distribution permits both to equally accept miseries and happiness. Any decision or action between two parties can only end in two different ways:

One party gets their way

A compromise is made

In the case of the former it is obvious that this would allocate happiness to the party that gets their way and equal amounts misery and happiness to both parties in the case of the latter. This is excluding events external to the situation at hand, such as the man gets his way, but as revenge the woman employs the silent treatment tactic for a week. Another example would be that a compromise is made but both parties are unhappy with said compromise, as the misery is greater than the happiness generated. In which case, both parties should return to the negotiating table.

Are Red Pill Prescriptions Abuse?

This was one of the major assertions in the reddit post [1] that prompted this post. That just because a man has been abused because of his blue pill mindset, this does not mean that he should swallow the red pill and end up emotionally abusing his future partners.

The author writes the following:

The subreddit is rife with success stories from men who claim they’ve gotten what they want out of their relationship. One guy claims (and I’m paraphrasing), “She does my laundry and dishes, we have sex whenever I want, and she knows that I don’t belong to her, and if she ever slips up or takes me for granted, she’s gone.”

It’s not that I doubt what he’s saying. I believe it. The problem is, what he’s describing is emotional abuse. What the Red Pill advocates is taking advantage of common weak points in the typical female psyche (most of which are present in your typical male psyche as well; everyone has weak points, and most of them are common to all humans, though some are more pronounced in one sex or another) to put pressure on women and bend them to your will. Users advise doing things like keeping her guessing, changing what you want and then berating her for not keeping up with your whims. Several advise that you never show affection for her unless she’s done something to please you. You break them like you’d break an animal.

And it’s damned effective in some cases. It’ll get you what you want if you do it right. [1]

So let us explore the actions he refers to and try to abstract them into more general terms.

A) If you act in a manner that is not-satisfactory to me, I will end this relationship.

B) Being unpredictable and keeping the other party off balance.

C) Withhold affection if the other party does not act according to your wishes.

For the actions under A, while it may sound extreme, is not emotional abuse in and of itself, it would depend highly upon the degree. Ending a relationship if it is not a good fit for you, is perfectly valid and part of knowing what you want and having good boundaries. To paraphrase feminists, nobody is owed a relationship. The trouble with this example is if you look at the reverse formulation. “If you act in a way that is satisfactory to me, I will remain in this relationship“, some may argue that this is conditional love and love should be unconditional, however if we look at divorce rates I think its pretty clear that such is not the case.

For the actions under B, I do agree that this could very well be emotional abuse, or it could be normal behavior for one of the parties involved. There are people who are unpredictable, who change their minds frequently, their values frequently or their interests frequently without it being classes as emotional abuse. If a demand is that everyone should have the same degree of predictability, otherwise you are emotionally abusing your partner, it follows that there are a lot of people with unpredictable minds and lives out that there are emotionally abusing the hell out of their partner.

Withholding affection (C), just like the others is behavior that is not emotional abuse in and of itself it would depend on other factors. If the other party blows 3 months salary when you are going broke, would a person be affectionate and understanding right then and there? Because that would be enabling financial abuse of themselves. Making it clear when another party has violated your boundaries, agreements, or principles is a central part to any interpersonal relationship, offering both affection and condemnation at the same time, or closely after each other, is emotional abuse in and of itself. It’s called sending mixed messages. Furthermore, I fail to see a distinction between withholding of affection to force compliance and withholding sex to force compliance.

Summary and Conclusions

The major question presented in the post that prompted this essay, is the perspective of the individual vs collective on a micro-scale. The core question being centered on give and take in relationships, furthermore, whether it is possible to establish a relationship wherein both parties verbally agree to put the other’s interests as equal to their own. When the author writes

“And as long as you keep that power dynamic active, you will never know what love is. Because love means that you feel what your lover feels. If she hurts, you hurt. If you hurt her, you feel all of her pain and all of the shame for knowing that you’re the one that caused it. If you really love someone, you’ll never want to hurt them.”

This is an appeal to blue pill perspective, the idea that in-spite of all the writings in the manosphere and elsewhere in media, a man can negotiate a relationship free of all the principles. Unicorns are never born, but the author wishes to create one in order to live out his blue pill fantasy. However, the major problem here comes with “hurt“, what does “hurting her” entail?

If we make the assumption that as the author outlines red pill thinking as the problem, it follows that what he means by hurt is “pursue your own sexual strategy and desires in your relationships“. Then it follows that in order to not hurt her, you would have to stop pursuing your own sexual strategy and desire in your relationships, and she would have to do the same. In effect, one would have to put the partner’s desires, interests and outcomes as equal to one’s own. I can imagine many people wanting to engage in a relationship where such a state was negotiated, the major question can such exist? Can one negotiate compliance to an identical ruleset given AWALT

Illimitableman writes of AWALT “For example, hypergamy, solipsism, Machiavellianism and immaturity are principles which make up the AWALT umbrella.”, in order to make an agreement wherein a partner is put on equal footing to oneself, and where sexual strategy is eliminated, that would require a woman free of solipsism, because solipsism is as further written:

“Such a conclusion is rarely ever THE truth, but rather, HER rationalised, chosen truth. A truth that reconciles negative with positive emotion to bring about an internal balance that is completely unconcerned with the abstraction that is objectivity.” Illimitableman [8]

P.1 A solipsistic woman’s view of an equitable relationship, is thus not objective, but rather subjective a truth that reconciles her emotional state. Thus, the male in order to facilitate the negotiation that is proposed by the author of the original post, has to either make an agreement that follows her subjective truth, in which case the agreement is no agreement at all.

P.2 The second bridge to cross is that of machiavellianism. If women are inherently Machiavellian, then it follows that it would be in her best interest to accept the agreement, and then overtly act in compliance, but covertly pursue her own ends. Thus, the negotiation becomes her shield, as she is overtly acting compliant, yet utilizing the agreement to shield her Machiavellian machinations.

P.3 A third chasm that has to be bridge is innate immaturity. A core characteristic of immaturity is the inability to put off present gratification for future gratification. An agreement to put aside sexual strategy in order to better the relationship, is in fact a long term agreement, not one that yields immediate gratification of a woman’s need for emotional upheaval, and variance. Thus, it follows that an immature person is likely to throw the agreement to the wind in order to gain instant gratification.

P.4 A fourth issue comes with hypergamy, is it possible for a woman to put away her innate tendency to attempt to branch swing. We have to remember that innate in the relationship agreement, is the putting away of sexual strategies, of which a central part for the woman is her hypergamy.

Thus, one can only conclude, that a woman who could uphold such a relationship agreement, would also be one free, of the 4 cornerstones of female nature described and discussed in P.1 – P.4, thus she would be a unicorn. Therefore, it follows that the author of the original post is in fact engaging in a case of circular reasoning, where his solution assumes that the red pill is false from the onset.

Finally, the author writes in his closing:

“In truth, the Red Pill as they represent it isn’t a true awakening at all. It’s a capitulation to a false dichotomy. A true awakening is realizing that the people around you are more than just faces, that they all have their own stories, their own thoughts, hopes and dreams, and that they are just as complex as you are. A true awakening is realizing that you don’t have to win the fight (and thereby habitually hurt someone you ostensibly care about), or lose it. That you can take your ball and go home.” [1]

This is where it becomes painfully obvious that the author is writing from a blue pill mindset, in that the third option is to not play the game at all, just be yourself. To draw this back to morality, the reason why morality is a subject that has consumed untold numbers of hours from such a variety and volume of philosophers since the dawn of humanity, is that it is inherently subjective in nature.

If we view morality from a utilitarian perspective, in two situations. One for each individual in the relationship, and one for the two in aggregate. The actions that would be more moral, in the first case are those in which each does the most to minimize their own misery and maximize their own pain. In the latter case, it is the one where both of them do their best to minimize misery and maximize pleasure for themselves and the other party.

Unless you are prepared to argue that those are the same thing, you have two contradictory approaches that give you different moral guidance.

A note:

I recently launched a Patreon page where I will be posting additional content every month for those who support me and I will do a Google Hangout for the highest tier Patrons (limited to 10 people).

I’ve also had some requests for consults, which I’ve declined up until now, but due to demand I’ve chosen to open up for doing some consults on request. For details please check out my Consulting and Patreon Page

And as long as you keep that power dynamic active, you will never know what love is. Because love means that you feel what your lover feels.

This is the primary disconnect every Blue Pill conditioned man has with Red Pill awareness, to say nothing about TRP practice. BP conditioning is rooted in egalitarian equalist presumption – love means that you feel what your lover feels – no, it doesn’t, but this is the all-is-equal mindset conditioning that BP men are trained to accept as fact.

This goes right to what I’ve written about men and women’s concepts of love being separate and different. Men’s concept of love is idealistic and this guy’s concerns about TRP are the best evidence of it. Women’s concept of love is informed by Hypergamic opportunism; women don’t even get to the point of ‘love’ unless a man presents the potential for optimizing Hypergamy.

So, anything that runs contrary to BP idealistic goals (that this guy has invested his ego into) is indistinguishable from abuse.

Thank you for the comment Rollo, always a pleasure to have the godfather of the manosphere stopping in. Just to make it clear, the

And as long as you keep that power dynamic active, you will never know what love is. Because love means that you feel what your lover feels.

Is not my perspective, it was from the original reddit post that prompted me to write the essay. From your cardinal principle of sexual strategy and Illimitableman’s definition of AWALT, it follows that the blue pill fantasy outlined in that quote is an impossibility and a contradiction.

The red pill as information is neither moral or immoral, how we elect to interpret and act upon that truth, may be moral or immoral. However, morality as a subject is inherently subjective, thus it follows that it can be disregarded if expedient.

“She does my laundry and dishes, we have sex whenever I want, and she knows that I don’t belong to her, and if she ever slips up or takes me for granted, she’s gone.”

That’s not emotional abuse. It’s a standard at-will employment contract. If she knows those are the terms, and has carried on being in the relationship, that’s consent to the contract. If she doesn’t know because he hasn’t made it clear, that’s him being deceitful. If she has been told but doesn’t want to believe it, or if she doesn’t like the terms of the contract and wishes he would change, that’s denial and she needs one of her friends to slap her uspside to re-start the common-sense module.

Emotional abuse is way worse than doing dishes on a day’s notice. Anyone who would suggest otherwise either has never seen emotional abuse or is bullying with words.

Kant was a bachelor. The majority of good philosophers were, are and evermore will be. His is an austere morality that only single people can live. Bentham and the elder Mill were married, and so prayed for happiness. John Stuart Mill wrote On Liberty and then sold us all down the river by arguing for women’s suffrage after Harriet Taylor started in on him. Bertrand Russell was married four times and screwed around like the aristocrat that he was. The vast majority of philosophy was written in the Good Old Days when men were men and killed the big animals and women strangled the chickens. So the old philosophers would have had the same views we do now: of course men should be in charge of their families, but most are such pussies that their wives rule them. Which is pretty much as it was, is and evermore will be as well.

“Deontological” – hell it’s been a while since I saw that word out in the wild. I’ve come round to a deontological view of Right Behaviour, though not Kant’s, as I’ve gotten older. But then, round here they set their clocks by my morning drive to work as well.

[…] means of manipulation are often fear, obligation, shame or guilt based, and thus developing your own approach to morality is paramount. if you are still mired within a system of morality that is holding you back, and one […]

There’s been a lot written on the subject of evo psych not really holding any water but tidily supporting Red Pill style theories (convenient as invoking nature shuts down any real dialogue or contradictory evidence) so I won’t write more on that other than that females in the animal kingdom are just as promiscuous, but I will say that men, even socialized to the order males, are desperately lonely and in need of intimacy and some monogamous bond, even if they still notice other women. And since most men aren’t rapists and manage to override other such violent ‘natural’ urges and are able to communicate in other areas of their lives, it seems Red Pill men are just sad men, poor communicators, in desperate need to live up to the Caveman Mystique while also feeling like they’re winning a game. Women actually see men as humans and not objects or rivals but are also socialized to believe we are equal and should trust men, the protector, but this is another cultural myth.

And furthermore- morality is not subjective. Humans want to be happy, and to cause little suffering as social beings that are wired to not want to see other social animals suffer. This is also a cop out.